The Grid
Electricity infrastructure as civilization’s substrate.
Bakke tells the story of the American electrical grid — a system so deeply embedded in daily life that its fragility has become invisible. What she describes is the paradox of mature infrastructure: the more successfully it fades into the background, the more catastrophic its failure becomes, and the harder it is to justify investment in its maintenance. The same dynamic operates in payment rails, banking systems, and every other piece of infrastructure that people use without noticing.